July 23, 2013

G-Force (2009)

by Ian Pugh It's no small wonder, I suppose, that Disney's 3-D contraption G-Force isn't nearly as bad as it could--and by all rights should--be.
Certainly, there are people at the Mouse House still convinced that an
overload of genre clichés (here the conventions of the spy movie) are
made instantly clever when applied to talking, farting animals (here
guinea pigs), and that the company's morality factory hasn't already
exhausted the virtues of makeshift families and believing in yourself.
But encoded in the formula this time around is an odd, unspoken thesis
about facing the hitherto-ignored consequences of cruelty towards those
who can't defend themselves. Most intriguing to that end, the big-name
actors roped into lending their voices to this mess are appropriately cast,
their live-action personae transferred to a sticky CGI concoction of
animal nature and human spite. Steve Buscemi cuts loose as an insane,
sadistic hamster (his paranoid tendencies--he jealously guards his
territory while mumbling to himself--born of "the psych ward at UCLA"),
for instance, while Nicolas Cage, as an orphaned, star-nosed mole named
"Speckles," improbably gives his best performance in years. Utilizing
his weirdo inflections from Peggy Sue Got Married, Cage manages to channel his familiar space-case into an unlikely outlet and pump it with quiet desperation--dare I say pathos--without
even the smallest hint of the self-parody that's plagued him of late.
More than what the film deserves? Most definitely, although the high
points of G-Force suggest that, at some stage of production, in some alternate universe, it may have actually deserved it.

Speckles is the intelligence man for the newly-dubbed "G-Force," a trio of guinea pigs--Darwin (Sam Rockwell), Juarez (Cage's Captain Corelli's Mandolin
co-star Penélope Cruz), and Blaster (Tracy Morgan)--trained by FBI
schlub Ben (Zach Galifianakis, whose CV full of crazy bastards casts
doubt on how "real" any of this supposed to be) for complicated recon
work. When an unauthorized mission to spy on household appliance
magnate Leonard Saber (Bill Nighy) goes pear-shaped, the head office
cuts their funding, turning the agents into fugitives. A brief
interlude through the life of a normal pet rodent follows, with
teenagers and young girls treating their respective animals like rag
dolls. Perhaps that's Toy Story's deathless influence, but once
a robotic microwave oven throws one of our furry protagonists into its
belly, attempting to figure out how long to cook him, it seems a
disturbingly logical conclusion to an all-too-recognizable cycle of
abuse. (By basing this scenario on infamous real-life cruelty to
animals, the film makes a chilling threat to explode a guinea pig in
3-D.)

Of course, these critters have the capacity to fight back, and
I don't think it's spoiling anything to reveal that the villain pulling
the strings comes from within the ranks of G-Force itself. That
character's father gives him a stern piece of advice in a flashback
that sees human exterminators laying waste to their home: "Son, if you
ever get the chance to bring mankind to its knees: do it." Hilarious,
unexpected, terrifying--not since the unsettling Open Season
has there been an animated kids' film this frank about the
repercussions of placing its anthropomorphic animals, both wild and
domesticated, in direct conflict with humanity. From a strictly Disney
perspective, these scenes are what Beverly Hills Chihuahua
would have been had it cared a whit about a premise inherently fraught
with danger and brought to life by the question that nags in G-Force:
are we to interpret these animals' evolution into sentience as the
first step in a violent revolution? It very nearly turns this whole
concept of talking-gerbil entertainment on its ear.

Unfortunately, G-Force
is also the most recent victim of the mentality that kids are
imperceptive morons who have to be pacified by 3-D, the most
transparent cinematic gimmick there is. The film itself is artificially
letterboxed so that the special effects occasionally spill out of the
frame, the better to convince you that shit is comin' at ya. These
effects are thrown out so often, at such high speeds, that I started
instinctively turning my head away, simply because the visual assault
became too much to handle. (The car chase that kicks off the third act,
hyperactive and incompetently executed to begin with, is rendered
unbearable by a literal fireworks show with no discernible purpose but
to distract you.) You could reasonably call it an attempt to provide the under-five crowd a Transformers 2
of their very own--right down to the household appliances that
spontaneously become pinchy/grabby killing machines--and, as such, many
narrative problems can be traced back to Hurley (Jon Favreau), the
obligatory "common man" who heralds his entrance (and practically every
other scene he's in) with a loud fart before coming out of the blue to
prove his courageousness. As G-Force almost merits a
recommendation on the basis of its appropriate/inappropriate subtext
and Cage's subtle subscription to same, it's only too bad you'll want
to shut your eyes and plug your ears for most of it. Originally published: July 24, 2009.